COMODO Time Machine BETA Released!

What about those with Raid setups? Will this be supported in future releases?

 

Is it possible to protect only one partition like i did with rollback rx?
I have two data partitions that i would not comodo to protect, so when i rollback to a snapshot, only patition c: will be recovered.

 

I'm really liking Comodo's Time Machine. I experienced one blue screen and a checkdisk with no errors. I like how you can boot into an old snapshot. I installed a backup software that ran my machine into the ground, with a reboot everything is back to normal. I can't wait until this comes out of beta, it doesn't have any of the nasty eaz/RB/ay traits right out of the gate.

 

what nasty traits?

 

Nasty traits such as:

1.) Hard drive constantly being accessed
2.) Heavy fragmentation of snapshots which leads to corrupt files
3.) GBs of data disappear from windows and EF/RB showing small snapshot sizes. Comodo doesn't seem to have this problem and shows correct snapshot size.

I've renewed my license for EF twice now even though I regret installing it each time. Comodo has some small interface issues but even in beta very impressive. I wonder if this is a clone of the previous software or if there are modifications. Too bad CTM doesn't have the snapshot backup feature that EF has. That was the only reason that I used Eaz-fix in the first place, it is very reliable.

Switching back to my fresh install of Win 7 after trying out software makes my day.

 

Today I decided to play with Comodo Time Machine on a clean installed Windows XP Pro system.

My first impression is actually surprisingly positive. It seems that this solution is what Eaz-Fix should have been. Although it's too short of a time to make an assessment, I'm interested in more intense testing of this software.

 

The more you read about this method of storing specific "data" the more I think about malware/whatever hiding from the OS and every security tool on it.

 

Eaz-Fix is almost same as CMT, so what you mean exactly? stability? ?

 

Now I wish I had saved the test results that I have done with Eaz-Fix in 2006, so I would know how to run the same tests against CTM.
I asssembled a spreadsheet with all the steps in order to provoke a bug deep under the hood of Eax-Fix.

CTM runs so much smoother on NTFS than I remember Eaz-Fix.
Somehow I had the idea that a sector based approach, like Eaz-Fix is to risky and that a file based approach would be better. I wonder if CTM is file based.

I want to do a lot more testing with CTM, also on slower systems.

 

Just for my info. Does one have to safe the snapshot on an external HDD? How long does a snapshot take?

 

I guess with file based approach you can,t have the current speed of taking and reverting to snapshots. Am I true?

 

Sjoeii, the snapshots stay on your system disk. It functions similar to revision history of documents. When you make an 'oops', you just pull up an older snapshot (which becomes active after rebooting the system).

With some imagination, you would be able to create totally different 'revisions', though, with each snapshot containing conflicting software (for example evaluating anti-malware software)

I wouldn't know, I assume that it has to do with file system references, as opposed to the files themselves...
Sector based solutions also manipulate the references, so why can't you do that with complete files?

 

Actualy he knows it very well. I remember him helping Eaz-Fix people in imroving their imaging application( AYGhost/ EAZ Clone) by modifying its driver code.

 

Thanks
But is it safe than to have the snapshot on your regular system desk? What if the regular system desk freezes?

 

Well very well is an understatement, wilbert

 

Peter

I get the impression of your answers, that the technology applied is not transparent. May I ask you a question: when you were alllowed one backup/restore technology to choose between snapshot like technology (used by CMT/EAZ/RollBack) or old fashioned bit-by-bit backup/restore (like Paragon/Acronis/Macrium/etc) what would you prefere and why?


Thx

Kees

 

The showstopping advantage with imaging products such as Macrium over this rollback technology IMHO is that in the case of mechanical HD failure the former will save your A$$,while the latter will be useless.Of course there's no need to choose between them though thankfully.

 

I never tried this but was always tempted: "
AyRecovery™ can also be included in a disk image roll out, like that created by Norton Ghost or similar utility. However, due to AyRecovery security design, some of the AyRecovery features don’t not exist in a “file” format. Instead, they exist as bits and bytes on the physical sectors of the hard drive. A normal Ghost approach to imaging a hard drive will not be able to include all AyRecovery components. Please follow these guidelines to prepare a hard disk for imaging: 1. Copy the AyRecovery files from CD into a folder on the hard disk that you will use to create an image. Rename the folder as Anyue. AyRecovery Deployment White Paper 4

2. Create a SETU.CFG file with the ASCW.EXE utility provided in the support folder of the program CD. Copy the setup.cfg file into the Anyue folder with AyRecovery files created in step 1.

3. Copy the SetAutoSetup.exe utility, provided in the support folder of the program CD, into the Anyue folder and double click to run it. SetAutoSetup.exe will write some deployment settings into the system registry. SetAutoSetup.exe will not return any interface.

Now create an image of this hard disk containing AyRecovery setup files with an imaging tool like Symantec’s Norton Ghost, or similar tool. You might reboot the system to a floppy disk or CD to create the hard disk image, but do not reboot into the Windows. The SetAutoSetup.exe has created some registry entries to auto start the AyRecovery program setup, rebooting into the Windows will kick off the Anyue-FXI program setup process.

This disk image contains the AyRecovery setup files rather than the actual AyRecovery program files. However, once the image is dumped onto a system, at the first startup, AutoSetup.exe generated registry entries will trigger the AyRecovery setup process. This process is silent and transparent to the users. Setup reads in the program parameters from the setup.cfg file configured in the previous step without any user interaction. At the end of the setup, AutoSetup.exe will automatically remove the AyRecovery setup files and restart the system."
Link to number 4

 

Having only tested TM in vm, and not having much experience with these types of tools, I have a question.

My setup has 2x750g drives in raid0 and another 750g drive as my data drive. I have a fileserver for my important stuff. I don't worry about losing my system disk because I have plenty of images to restore with.

In this type of tool, you state it lays a transparent OS on the drive, is that that system drive only? So that my data drive would not be touched in that way? I understand if you engage an image/rollback effect for another drive, it might have to map drive sectors or whatever. My concern is that if I use TM that I have a partition on my data drive that I can boot into. I don't want the data drive to have TM on it when it boots, this is my emergency OS.

When you install a tool like TM on the system drive (raid array in my case), and lets say that the array becomes proglematic with errors and needs rebuilt. Does a standard format remove the TM completely? I bet that breaking a raid array and rebuilding it would.

What abou the use of images after you have installed TM? For example, I build my raid array, format it, then use Macrium to put my image on. Pretty clean and fast. Now I put TM on, and go about life. In one month TM is screwed or I just want to put my image back on (I do this all the time). When I put the image back in place, will TM be gone? Its files it uses may not be depending where it puts them.

Futher, if I install TM and then make an image, can I then put this image on my machine and expect TM to be in place and working?

What I don't want to happen is put TM on and then when I want to replace my image have to rebuild the array or format. It is better to just put the image back on with or without TM in the image, then I can swap as I please.

Sul.

 

@Peter and Andyman,

Thx